Android P Features May Include Enhanced Call Blocking

Google hasn’t confirmed when it’s going to introduce its next major iteration of Android but a new report suggests that the first Android P Developer Preview download could be available by mid-March. The activity in AOSP has revealed information about some expected Android P features and it’s now believed that the upcoming iteration of Android could bring enhanced call blocking functionality. It may enable users to natively block calls from private, unknown, and payphone numbers.

AOSP has previously dropped hints about some other Android P features such as native call recording, native support for iris scanners and the ability to block idle apps from accessing the camera and microphone of the device. New sets of commits have been discovered in the AOSP gerrit from a Sony engineer who have been behind many carrier-related changes in Android recently. These changes include the ability to hide the signal strength from settings and to define the LTE signal bars.

The recent commits add new functionality to the native dialer app which will allow users to block calls from private, unknown, and payphone numbers as well as any numbers not in their contact list. Users can currently block calls on a per-number basis only which means that they must add numbers they want to block manually. This can only be done after calls have been received from unwanted numbers.

This new feature will allow users to prevent such numbers from calling them in the first place so that they’re not bothered by unwanted callers. However, the commits do reveal that the new call blocking feature will only be available if they’re allowed by carriers, which might prove to be a problem because some carriers might decide to charge users for it.